Newegg reviews have very little value IMO. Most of the buyers don't have the ability to properly evaluate what they've bought, beyond "Yay, it works!" or "F**k, this thing was DOA!" (and "DOA" is customer error as often as not).

There's very little point to a "killer" NIC if you're playing online, since the broadband connection is the limiting factor. There might be *some* value in a LAN party context, but even that is debatable, since most game engines will be tuned for online play anyhow.

The years just pass like trains. I wave, but they don't slow down.-- Steven Wilson

I haven't used one, but reviews (I'll let you google) that I've read in the past noted a positive change in experience. In games where it's who sees who first (and subsequently who shoots first), it can be a game changer, such as in Counter-Strike; but even if it did make a difference, it would be really difficult to prove.

Its a whole lot of cash for something that really does very little. When this first came out it was in the neighborhood of $200 or so, it has since dropped quite a bit, even with all the hype. I would think the little it does will really not make much of a difference, since if your connection will not be affected by this card.

Krogoth wrote:The features of the card are utterly wasted on a typical desktop. They are meant for a datacenter server handling hundreds if not thousands of queries.

Not even that. I have a coworker that had one and he brought it in. We put it in a PC in our datacenter outside the DMZ on a T1 line and had a packet sniffer running. we watched as we downloaded torrents (legal ones), http downloads, netflix, normal page views, and even WoW. The packets looked no different from anything we already had running. Besides from an easier way to setup up QoS (QoS for dummies) there wasnt a real benefit in our eyes.

Yeah, the QoS capabilities are probably the only feature that will make a real difference for most people. And then only if you're playing an online shoot-em-up game while other people who are sharing the broadband line with you are hogging bandwidth.

The years just pass like trains. I wave, but they don't slow down.-- Steven Wilson

just brew it! wrote:Yeah, the QoS capabilities are probably the only feature that will make a real difference for most people. And then only if you're playing an online shoot-em-up game while other people who are sharing the broadband line with you are hogging bandwidth.

I am skeptical about their QoS implementation being smart enough to coordinate with the other clients on a network, as you imply.

just brew it! wrote:Yeah, the QoS capabilities are probably the only feature that will make a real difference for most people. And then only if you're playing an online shoot-em-up game while other people who are sharing the broadband line with you are hogging bandwidth.

I am skeptical about their QoS implementation being smart enough to coordinate with the other clients on a network, as you imply.

Good point.

I modify my previous post thusly: "... And then only if you're playing an online shoot-em-up game while you're running torrents in the background on the same machine."

The years just pass like trains. I wave, but they don't slow down.-- Steven Wilson

JBI: Pretty much. The Bigfoot would probably be better than your average crab implementation (which is far from horrible itself, re: Marvell), but might not improve much over a decent Intel hardware NIC. Further, I don't see how it would help with a wireless connection which is a must for me.

But as I said about Counter-Strike above, this thing is all about twitch shooters on the Internet or otherwise. If that's not you, and you're not competitive, then it isn't even worth looking at, and is at the bottom of your list even if you are.

5 years ago when they were trying to sell this thing for over $200 it wasn't worth it, but at $90 and after reading that they fixed issues preventing it from competing with normal network cards I thought I would give it a try.

All I really have to say about it is that I really don't notice a difference. I still keep it in because if I take it out and experience lag I always start thinking I shouldn't have taken it out, but I'll admit that this is probably nothing but a placebo.

Back in the day offloading networking to a separate piece of hardware was a great idea but nowadays when pretty much every CPU is capable of running 4 or more threads simultaneously, this is no longer an issue.

The only other reason to get it would be the application bandwidth throttling in the network manager, but the drivers are a resource hog and I don't really use them. If you think you would then go for it, otherwise save your money.